


Keep Following the Heartlines

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [29]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BFFs, Epic Bromance, Gen, Graphic descriptions of gore, Hurt/Comfort, Music, Nightmares, PTSD, deliberate car smash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-21
Packaged: 2017-11-25 22:23:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A week after the bomb blast (in To Be Consoled), the case is closed. John and Sherlock dare to attempt sleep at last. PTSD nightmares are in store for John, they know: but it's Sherlock who wakes, frantically trying to scrub the phantom blood from his skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The blood running through

**Author's Note:**

> The title and chapter headings are all lyrics from Heartlines by Florence and the Machine

In the week following the bomb, neither Sherlock nor John slept much. John slipped into old, almost forgotten battlefield and on-call habits of catnaps and snatched minutes of rest, interspersed with that renewed habit of too-long showers that provided a respite from the world that rubbed his nerve endings raw. He was determined to keep up with Sherlock and to avoid the inevitable nightmares that would come with sleep. 

Sherlock of course was on the case, with sleep therefore considered surplus to requirements for the interim. For a change he was working _with_ his brother to track down what turned out to be a reckless, ambitious offshoot of Moriarty’s old network. Sherlock was furious to discover someone so dangerous had slipped through his net and determined to catch the bastard himself. John was grimly determined to be at his side to see this foul business was done with.

Sherlock was less than impressed when Sally Donovan’s crew apprehended the psychopath-in-training. It felt like unfinished business and it felt a little like failure. John was just relieved it was over.

So the week ended, and their work was done. Whether they liked it or not, it was time to let go, give in to fatigue, and to sleep, whatever the consequences.  Without either needing to ask, they took up their Nightmare Night positions – Sherlock on the left hand side of his own bed, John propped up on pillows on the right, reading until he couldn’t keep his eyes open any more.

They both thought it would be John to wake from nightmares, twitching and swearing. It was, however, Sherlock who jerked awake that first night, lurching to his feet almost before he was awake. He stumbled in the dark, wiping anxiously at his face, his arms, tugging on his hair as though pulling out twigs or cobwebs. He didn’t seem to realise he was making sharp, distressed noises, little wails of horror and disgust.

John, at the fringes of something awful himself, woke instantly and tried to scramble after Sherlock, but his feet were tangled in the sheets. He kicked out of them and by the time he caught up with Sherlock in the bathroom, the detective was sitting in the tub, still in his pyjama pants and T-shirt, too-hot water streaming over him as he scrubbed frantically at his arms with a nail brush. He’d emptied half a bottle of shampoo on his head, lathered it but abandoned the task to work on his pale skin. He scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, eyes wide open, staring, appalled, at his arms. He still made that strange, horrified sound.

John knelt by the tub.

“Sherlock.”

“I can’t get it off.”

“Sherlock, it’s all right. You’re home. You’re safe.”

“It won’t come off, John. It’s in my hair.” Sherlock left off scouring his red, raw skin to raise a hand, which hovered over his sodden, soapy head, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch it. Then he shuddered, head to foot, his skin crawling with revulsion at the sensation of wet cloth on his skin. Almost in a panic, Sherlock clawed at the T-shirt, dragged it over his head and threw it violently out of the tub. It landed with a heavy, squelching thud , but even before it landed, Sherlock had returned to scrubbing. Up his arms now, at his clavicle and throat, back down to his hands and wrists, abrading the skin to rawness. Still making that awful, muted, keening sound.

John reached out slowly so that Sherlock could see the movement coming and placed a hand on Sherlock’s wrist, stilling the frantic motion.

“Shh, now. You’re hurting yourself. It’s all right. Shh.”

Sherlock froze, staring at his own hands like they didn’t belong to him. He swallowed, calmed a little, but his hands were trembling. He scowled at them. They didn’t stop trembling.

“Here.” John took the nailbrush from him, then held Sherlock’s wrists firmly, giving them a gentle squeeze. An anchoring touch. Sherlock flexed his hands and then rested them, exhausted, on his bent knees. John began to withdraw but Sherlock turned his own hands palm-up and caught John’s wrists in turn. John stayed where he was.

“I’m here,” John said, like he always did when Sherlock woke from nightmares. Sherlock always wanted to point out that the comment was unnecessary. Obvious. Stupid. But he never did. Because it was stupid, obvious, and _necessary_ , so necessary, to hear that voice, to come back to the present, to Baker Street.

Sherlock drew a quaking breath.

John’s thumbs were rubbing soothing circles on the back of Sherlock’s hand. “Do you want to tell me?”

Sherlock hunched under the falling water and wondered if he did. But his mouth opened and the words came out before he’d consciously made the decision.

“I’d been careless,” he said, “Not enough rest, I imagine.  I was captured. I missed some of the variables, I missed a minor player. Marikov. Small time thug, really, but he was taking me up the chain. Too soon. If they found out I was alive before I was ready to move… ” He shook his head, as though to rid himself of that unconscionable thought, “Marikov had handcuffed me to a bar fixed above the passenger seat window. Installed for the purpose. Not the first time he’d taken prisoners to HQ this way. We were on a freeway. Concrete barriers either side. He’d strapped me in with a seatbelt, thinking it would help to keep me still. I… took a calculated risk.” Sherlock closed his eyes. “On a bend. I got my legs up and shoved the steering wheel with my knees. We went into the barrier. Eighty miles an hour.”

Sherlock blinked, as though clearing his vision. “The human body can react in strange ways to impact. Markiov was a big man. Very fat. Very. He. He. He.” Sherlock grit his teeth, trying to gather his scattering thoughts, to push them over his reluctant tongue. He could smell it again. He could taste it. The horror. It broke down his detachment and left him fragmented, and he thought if he could just say it, articulate it, make words and spit them out, he might spit out the memory with them. “Like a bag of meat. Meat and blood. Split open. Like a. Bag. Like. The engine had come straight through to the cabin. Lucky I had my feet up, really. Not a mark on me. Not a. Not. Just him. His. Meat and blood. All over. All. In my,” his fingers twitched towards his scalp, “In. All. All over. Me.”

Sherlock registered that John’s hands were now gliding up and down his arms. John had retrieved a flannel and was gently sponging down Sherlock’s hands, forearms, shoulders. Completely unnecessary, of course. The incident was long ago, the gore coating his body was just a phantom now, and he was in any case directly under a torrent of hot running water. Sculptures of white foam escaped from his hair and slid down his skin, from time to time, but that was all.

Still. Sherlock did not tell John to stop.

“It took me fifteen minutes to pick the lock. It should have been two. Three at the most.  My record for that kind of lock is fifty seven seconds.  _Fifteen minutes_. I got out before a car stopped to investigate, though. I hid in the trees near a farm. Middle of the night. Easy to avoid detection. It was a few more hours before I could find somewhere to wash. There was. There were. Bits. Pieces of. Bits.”

Sherlock shuddered again.

“Why is it, John, that a dead body is just a body, just a shell and clues, but that flesh and bone disassociated from their proper place are so… ” His eyes closed gain. Sherlock reached up to his head again. “It took days to get it all out of my hair.”

John’s hands moved up there too, under Sherlock’s hands, then onto Sherlock’s head, in his hair, lathering the scented pool of soap.

“If Marikov had succeeded in taking me to his superiors,” continued Sherlock, “They would certainly have killed me. But not before they had carried out Moriarty’s last orders. Not before they killed you. And Greg and Mrs Hudson.”

“You got away,” said John calmly, fingers working Sherlock’s scalp, “You survived. You beat them and you came home.” He guided Sherlock to lean forward, then used the flannel to sluice the suds away from his hair and face.

Sherlock, his face tilted up into the spray, his eyes closed, thought of that first night he had confessed the contents of his nightmares to John. Eight days after he had returned to Baker Street at long, oh so long, last _. I don’t regret the things I did_ , he’d said, _they were terrible but necessary. It was you or them. I chose you._

“I chose you,” he told John again. _Every time. In a heartbeat._

 “Good,” said John, who also remembered that night’s confessions, “Good. Because I choose you, too. Every single time.” He washed the last of the shampoo away.

Sherlock reached out for the bottle of conditioner and passed it to John. “It’ll knot otherwise,” he said.

Wordlessly, John guided Sherlock’s upper body out from under the spray again. He applied the conditioner and worked it through Sherlock’s hair with his fingertips.

There was no pity in his touch, not even grief, though Sherlock knew that John felt grief for him, for the still unspoken things that were done by him and to him in that year. There was, though, gentleness, efficiency, steadiness and reassurance in John’s hands. All the things that Sherlock needed so that he could come back to himself. Sherlock could feel the calluses on the pads of the fingers of John’s left hand, those on the tips of his right. Doctor’s hands. Musician’s hands. _Safe_ hands.

Sherlock realised that his heart rate had calmed at last; that he was breathing steadily again. He allowed the tension to leave his posture fully. For a brief moment he leaned sideways, against the rim of the tub, against John, his temple against John’s breastbone. John’s pyjamas were, like Sherlock’s, soaked through, and he made a very damp headrest. John felt warm, though, and solid. No-one, in Sherlock’s experience, was ever as solid and warm and absolutely _present_ as John Watson.

“Sometimes I can smell artificial pine,” he said, “From the deodoriser he hung over the ash tray.” He paused. “I haven’t thought about that in a long time.”

“Things come back randomly,” said John, in his calm, quiet voice, his fingers combing conditioner through Sherlock’s hair as he spoke, “It’s strange. Once – it was winter, I remember, we were watching the Victoria and Albert museum for that curator to come out from the sewer tunnel and it was raining – I could have sworn I could taste burnt cumin powder. A house had been firebombed and it was still burning. It was in a little village, a nowhere place, and just this one house, burning. The family got out, and they were screaming blue murder at the convoy I was in. We had an evil few minutes, but no-one lost their head, no-one shot anyone. I left some ration packs with the mother – nothing else I could do, really – and we moved on. There was just this… this smell. Sort of a taste, really. Burnt cumin powder. And for some reason, that rainy day, I could taste it. No idea why. Brains are funny things.”

Sherlock sat up straight again, turned his face up into the spray and used his cupped hands to sluice water over his face and hair, rinsing conditioner and sense memory down the drain.

“We caught the curator,” said Sherlock.

“We did.”

Sherlock stayed with his elbows on his knees, face tilted up into the falling water. John’s hand was placed on the back of his neck, a simple touch.

“I don’t know about you,” said John, “But I don’t think I can sleep again tonight.”

“No,” Sherlock concurred.

John rose to his feet and held his hand out to Sherlock. “Come on. Dry off, get dressed and get your lockpick kit. I have an idea.” And he grinned.


	2. I’m there with you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Phantom blood can be washed away, but to be cleansed inside as well, there's music. But these are Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. They need to restore their souls in style and with a little B&E.

Sherlock dried and dressed, his hair still damp, the ends of it curled against the nape of his neck. He met John, also freshly dressed and a little damp around the edges, in the living room. John pushed Sherlock’s violin case into his hands and collected his own acoustic guitar in its case.

“I’ve rosined it up for you,” he said.

“Not the electric?” Sherlock nodded at the guitar case.

“Can’t carry the amp too, with what I have in mind. It’s already a stupid enough idea.”

Sherlock grinned. He knew what John had in mind, and that John knew that he knew.

“You said once you’d like to play there,” said John in answer to an unasked question, “No time like the present.”

“It’s two o’clock in the morning, John. We could get arrested for trespassing.” He sounded thrilled by the prospect.

“I know. We’ll just have to be clever about it.”

They both had a mad gleam in their eye as they tiptoed down the stairs and made their way in the dead of night to the Royal Albert Hall.

John wore his guitar on his back in a stiffened canvas case, rigged in a sort of backpack contraption. Greg referred to it as John’s Samurai Guitar outfit, not knowing John had had it made up especially for a case. The get-up left his arms free, which was handy if he needed to use his gun. The Sig was at home, tonight, though. The plan was to play, not shoot anyone.

John kept watch in the darkness by the rear exit while Sherlock picked the lock, but no-one came near. The door opened and first Sherlock, then John, slipped inside the building. They crouched slightly, creeping along as stealthy as you please, John bearing both his own guitar and Sherlock’s violin case. Compared to his full kit and a rifle back in the day, sneaking through a concert hall armed with stringed instruments was a doddle. He kept in Sherlock’s wake, because Sherlock knew the way, even in the dark, and John didn’t.

Once or twice they paused, breathless, waiting for the sound of footsteps to pass and fade. They crept passed dressing rooms, backdrops, corridors and coils of rope. Finally, they ghosted past black drapes and stepped out onto floorboards and the gaping sense of space all around them. 

John paused in the wings and very slowly and quietly put the violin case on the ground; took off his guitar case and put it down on the boards. While Sherlock took out the violin, John retrieved his guitar. Then the padded to the middle of the stage.

A few footlights glowed at the edge of the stage for safety; the exit lights cast a green pallor in a tiny pool over the doors. There was only just enough light to see, but there was a quality to the darkness, a way that sound rolled out to the stalls and up to the unshining lights and out to the wings that was unmistakable.

They were on the main stage at the Royal Albert Hall.

The vast space and its silence pressed in on them.

John had to suppress a mad giggle. Sherlock arched an eyebrow at him, and nearly set him off again.

 “How long do you think we have?” asked John, voice barely above a breath.

“Security guard went through five minutes ago. We have thirty before she circles back again.”

“She’ll hear us before then, though.”

“Actually, no. She’ll be in the foyer soon.”

“Better not waste time on a warm-up, I guess.”

“Nonsense,” Sherlock said, “Since we’re here, we do it properly.”

They began with one of their standard warm-up pieces, _La Serenissima_. Afterwards they paused but there were no shouts or sounds of running footfalls, or even stealthy ones. So far, so good.

“ _Illuminated_?” suggested John. Sherlock nodded. They played, but didn’t sing. Phantom music they might get away with, but not a full-throated song. John pulled back from his usual energy, making the song gentler, moodier, and Sherlock responded immediately in kind. The lyrics that unspooled inside their heads took on a peculiar moonlit quality on that dark stage.

But John was worried that they were running out of time and, fun as this was, it wasn’t the main point. At the end of _Illuminated,_ he unslung his guitar and nodded at Sherlock.

“The stage is yours, Mr Holmes. Impress me.” He walked to the edge of the stage, at the lip of where the audience should have been, and sat down, watching expectantly.

Sherlock closed his eyes, considered for a moment, then raised the violin and the bow.

It took a few stanzas for John to realise what he was hearing. For the last year, he had heard  snippets and snatches of this composition in the night, when Sherlock was trying to think, sometimes when he was trying not to think. And here it was, all of a piece, played as though Sherlock had been rehearsing it for months.

It began with a tense rise and rise and rise and then a terribly fall of notes, and a quiet dirge, segueing into furtive flight. Urgency came into it then, but suddenly there was a series of familiar notes. John’s mind supplied the lyric over the melody – _you’re flying, not falling… you’re not crying, you’re calling_ – the song he had sent out, hopelessly hoping into the void, which Sherlock had answered with the secret signal. _I’m alive_.

And on it moved, Sherlock bending over the violin, stretching, sweeping one step sideways, another back, dancing with the violin and the music it made.

So much was in that music. Scraping, jarring notes, grace notes, flight and fear, then respite. A cadence or two from the Scottish lullaby, a glimmer here of Illuminated, the rising thrum there of _Reforged_. Between them, decisive action laced with longing, desperation and purpose.

John knew music, but he didn’t know how some of those stanzas made him think of Mrs Hudson and Baker Street, how some were the sound of running across London at midnight, adrenalin singing in his veins. He thought he recognised a flavour of, somehow, sturdiness and swagger underlined with a kind of laughter, and Sherlock gave him a brief look and John realise that those notes were his, his theme, and that he’d heard them echoing on and off throughout the piece. They coalesced with those sounds of Baker Street and London, then, and the haunted sounds were left behind.

And then it was ending, inflecting upward, but not plaintive so much as anticipatory, ready for the next adventure. Sherlock held the final note, and then his stance, and the music faded and John just stared and stared and stared.

This music. This glorious sound. Only Sherlock could have written it; only he could have played it. There was nothing of Collared in it, nothing of their shared jamming in their living room. It was a masterpiece, and John knew that he was the only other person who would ever hear it.

Words, in the face of it, seemed paltry. Instead, sitting there on the edge of the stage, John smiled. He beamed. His eyes were wide open with wonder and his whole heart was there in that boyish, joyous grin.

Sherlock’s eyes crinkled and he gave a little bow from the waist, a gracious dip of his head. John mimed wild applause and throwing streamers. Sherlock rolled his eyes at him, but failed to suppress the pleased tilt to his mouth.

And then the sound of clapping made them both freeze.

Intriguingly, it wasn’t the slow clap of a sarcastic bastard who had caught them trespassing. It was the enthusiastic and appreciative applause of someone who had genuinely enjoyed the show.

“Lovely!” said a rich, feminine voice from the shadows at the back of the stalls, the French-African lilt in the accent, “So beautiful. Dr Watson’s book says you play, but not how well.”

The woman – in her forties, broad-hipped and muscular, red-dyed hair pulled back and a uniform fitting snugly over her breasts – walked down the aisle, beaming at them.

“You shouldn’t be here, you know, Mr Holmes,” she continued, still beaming, “It’s most irregular.”

John opened his mouth, couldn’t think of anything to say and closed it again. Sherlock, however, was almost never at a loss for words.

“I wanted to find out if it was possible to get into the Albert Hall undetected.”

“You kind of blew that, what with playing your violin and all.”

“It was not necessary for the experiment to _remain_ undetected,” he said waspishly.

She tipped her head back and roared with laughter. “Oh you are a funny one.”

Sherlock’s expression indicated that he did not entirely approve of being considered ‘a funny one’. His expression only made her laugh harder.

“Well,” she said after a minute, wiping tears from her eyes, “I’m not going to ask. As long as you don’t think anyone is going to murder me on my rounds or blow up the hall, I’ll get to work. Though, I am very sorry to say, you will have to leave. Truly, I’d love you to stay and keep playing, but I’d sit here listening to you all night, and it’s more than my job’s worth.”

She nodded at John as he climbed to his feet again. “I only heard a little of your playing too, Dr Watson. You hardly mention that at all in the blog or in the book.”

“This is the second time you’ve mentioned a _book_.” Sherlock frowned quizzically at her and then John.

Even John seemed a bit surprised when he suddenly said: “Oh! _The_ book. I forgot, what with… with everything else this week. You remember? _The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes_. It came out yesterday.”

Sherlock quizzical look vanished under a dismissive air.  “Oh. That. I deleted that.”

The woman looked scandalised but John only gave Sherlock a challenging glare. “Does that mean you want me to return the new microscope and instruments I bought for you out of the advance?”

Sherlock managed to look a little shifty. “I thought they were for my birthday.”

“Your birthday is in January, you great git.”

“Is it? I don’t pay much attention.”

John snorted his disbelief.

The woman chortled, reminding them of her presence. “Ah, you are both the funny ones.” She nodded, as though this was exactly how she had pictured them, “I bought the book today, Dr Watson. I’m reading it in my breaks. The stories are wonderful.”

John preened a little.

“They are romanticised abominations of studies in deductive reasoning,” said Sherlock, “Dumbed down for the reading populace.”

“Sherlock. It’s not too late for me to sell that microscope online.” John’s scowl was faux-furious though, just as Sherlock’s disparagement was (well mostly) faux mockery. They both knew that Sherlock thought John’s writing ridiculous, and that John liked writing anyway, and they’d both agreed, when the publisher’s offer came in, that the timing was right.

There would never, ever be interviews with them, nor from anyone who really knew them. The media could go hang its collective self after what had happened with Moriarty. The only officially endorsed words about Sherlock Holmes and John Watson the public would ever see would be the ones John wrote in his blog, his books and his songs. In decades to come, tomes would be written about Holmes and Watson, based on analysing John’s words. Almost all of them would get it wrong.

The security guard considered their little scene, and rightly perceived it as a performance. “If you’ll pack up, gentlemen,” she said with the greatest warmth and patience, “I’ll show you out. Though I would be delighted if you would sign my book for me, Dr Watson. And you, Mr Holmes.”

They obliged. John wrote: _To Carmelia, thank you for allowing the recital, with best regards, John Watson._

Sherlock scowled at the book, then wrote a bar of music, the stems of the notes sweeping up and down like spikey blades, and scrawled SH beneath them. Without the lines to show which actual notes they were, Carmelia never knew that they were the notes for these three words: _I am illuminated_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter references John's songs Believe, Illuminated and Reforged, all posted earlier in the Guitar Man series.


	3. The only place that I call home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After nightmares, after music, when you still can't sleep, comes strength from friendship and from home.

Sherlock and John emerged from the theatre into London’s soft pre-dawn dimness. The air was cool, but something in it promised a warm day ahead. Sherlock paused to consider the scent and sight of his city at this hour, violin case in one hand, freshly washed and unruly hair springing all over the place in ungroomed abandon. John, unaware that his own hair had dried in ridiculous spikes, fastened his guitar case on his back and stepped into place beside him.

“Well,” he said with a grin, “That turned out much better than I expected. Nobody got arrested and we didn’t have to flee into the night with police in hot pursuit.”

Sherlock pursed his lips, as though considering how one of those two things would in fact have made the escapade perfect. Wordlessly, he led the way over the street and into Kensington Gardens. John followed, just as silently and perfectly content with it.

Finally, they came to a bench overlooking the Serpentine. Sherlock tucked his feet up against the arm of the bench and turned his back. John fell into habitual position, his own feet up, his back pressed to Sherlock’s. They leaned against each other, backs warm, arms and chests a little cold. Sherlock held his violin case in his lap. John’s guitar was propped on the ground in its case, leaning against his leg.

There followed long minutes of companionable silence. Sherlock could tell simply by the movement of John’s back against his, the small sigh that John made, the evening that lay behind them, what John was thinking about. He would claim to have known what John was going to say next too, but he wouldn’t have admitted that it was mostly an educated guess.

“I know why you didn’t take me with you,” said John at last, “I know why you didn’t let me join you afterwards, too. It’s… well, not okay, but it isn’t _not_ okay. Lives were at stake, and it’s what we had to work with.” He sighed. “I don’t usually waste time on wishing the past was different. It’s pointless. I know it. No need to tell me, if you were thinking about doing that. Still. Sometimes. I wish. That’s all. Sometimes I wish. I wish I’d…” And then he stopped, because it was no use articulating all the things he wished he’d been able to do and stop and change.

John hadn’t really expected Sherlock to say anything, but it had been that kind of night, where words and deeds normally not said and done had their place.

“If it had been possible and safe, John, I would have told you from the start, or sent word where to join me.”

“I know.”

“I tried to leave you a clue.”

“Which I failed to fully grasp. I’m an idiot. I know. I managed some of it, at any rate.”

“You managed more than Mycroft did at the time. That surprised me.”

“He wasn’t at his best.”

“No.” Sherlock splayed his fingers over the violin case. “Thank you for the recital.”

John pressed his spine against Sherlock’s behind him, a kind of unhanded hug, “Thank you for the… what do you call that? A sonata? It was magnificent.”

John felt Sherlock press back against him and they both fell silent for a short while. The first proper light of the day began to glimmer in the east.

“I think Mycroft and Sally are having an affair,” said Sherlock suddenly, “Mycroft hid it well, but Sally positively radiates affection at him.”

“Seriously?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Affection and sexual desire. It’s _horrible_.”

John smothered a laugh.

“It’s not funny when you have to _see_ it.”

“God, yes, I know. The way Clara and Harry used carry on when they thought I wouldn’t notice, and the whole time I was just thinking: I don’t want to see that. That’s my _sister_. People in love are so inconsiderate.”

“Mycroft and Sally. In love.” Sherlock tried the concept on for size. He shuddered delicately. “Ugh.”

“Well, when you put it like that…”

They fell silent again, and Sherlock thought that John dozed, though he didn’t quite sleep. He could feel the back of John’s head drop snugly into the curve of Sherlock’s neck, the short, soldierly hair tickling at the top of his spine. Sherlock closed his eyes, relaxed into the position. They fit like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Sleepy jigsaw pieces.

Sherlock heard a lone jogger approach, slow down, make a noise that might have meant ‘damned queers’ or ‘aren’t they adorable?’. Another sound, like an affectionate hum. The jogger thought they were adorable queers then. _Idiot._ The jogger moved on.

John sighed. “I thought that one was going to come over to pinch our cheeks.”

“Apparently we make an endearing couple.”

“Apparently. Surprised he didn’t take a photo.” John wriggled a little, trying to get more comfortable. He didn’t complain, but Sherlock knew the exhaustion combined with the morning chill were making John’s shoulder ache.

“No rehearsals this weekend,” John said, before Sherlock could speak, “But Greg and Molly have asked everyone around for dinner tonight. You saw the email? By which I mean, do you remember getting the email or did you expunge the knowledge from your memory? Because we both know that you do that with dinner invitations.”

“I intended to expunge it. Molly keeps texting me with reminders. It’s profoundly irritating.”

“So are you coming?”

“She’ll keep texting me all day, and she’ll text me all day tomorrow if I don’t. All week, probably.”

“She’s learned a thing or two about you,” said John, and Sherlock could hear the grin in his voice.

“She and Greg are going to announce they’re expecting,” said Sherlock.

“Did she tell you too?”

“Of course not. I deduced it at the pub last week before the bomb went off.”

“Ah. She told me after. To cheer me up, I think. _In the midst of death we are in life_ and all that.”

“It worked.”

“It did.”

“And it’s the other way around,” Sherlock couldn’t keep himself from saying, “In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succour…”

“The Book of Common Prayer. I know. I like my version better.”

“I suppose it’s true in either direction,” Sherlock conceded. _In the midst of death we are in life._  Molly and Greg creating a new life together. Sherlock thought then of waking up in the black of night, steeped in the memory of death, and then of the return to life that followed. John bringing him back with word and touch. _Of whom may we seek succour?_ _Of John._ Sherlock took a sharp breath, crossly clearing his thoughts of the overt sentimentality. The truth of it remained, regardless.

As though sensing the sombre direction of Sherlock’s mood, John shifted. “Since you know, you can help me practise my surprised face, so Greg doesn’t realise I know already,” said John, swinging around to sit on the bench.

“Don't bother. You're a terrible actor. You'll never convince anyone.”

“Really? What about this?” John pulled his best surprised face.

“Terrible. Just tell him you diagnosed it from the way she only drank lemonade and kept touching her stomach and looking at Greg at the pub that night.”

“That's Holmesian deduction, not medical diagnosis. He’ll know the difference. Anyway, what does _your_ surprised face look like?”

“I’m not going to do a ‘surprised face’. Molly knows that I deduced it, and Greg will work out that I did. No point in pretending to be surprised at all.”

John sighed. “Any tips, then?”

“Don’t do surprised. Do excited or thrilled or horrified, whatever you actually feel about it. Then I presume there will be hugging. If you get to the hugging quickly enough Greg won’t question anything else.”

“Horrified?”

“Or whatever you actually feel.”

Sherlock wasn’t really horrified. Molly was obviously very happy, as was Greg, and the new Sherlock that he had become, post-Away, wanted them to be happy. It was good that they should be happy, after all he had done to protect them; all _Molly_ had done to protect _him_ as well as Greg and John and Mrs Hudson; helping him to ‘die’ and faithfully keeping his secret. Yes, if having babies made them happy, then they should do that. He would go to dinner and not put on any pretend faces, and actually be pleased for them. 

John only laughed, then his stomach emitted a loud gurgle.

“I feel hungry,” John supplied unnecessarily, “Starving. Christ, I could eat a camel.”

“I have a better idea.”

“Thank god. Camel’s a bit gamey and kind of hard to find around here.”

They picked themselves up from the bench, stretched the stiffness out of their joints, picked up their instruments and made their way back to Baker Street. Sherlock took them on a short detour to a French bakery, where he picked up a dozen fresh croissants.

Instead of heading upstairs when they reached Baker Street, though, John took the hall leading to Mrs Hudson’s flat.

“You are often at great pains to point out that there are correct hours for socialising,” said Sherlock, “If Mrs Hudson shouts, I am going to lay the blame at your feet.”

John grinned. “She won’t believe you. Even if I tell her it was my idea, she’ll assume it was really you.”

Sherlock gave John a hard, speculative look. “Does anyone else suspect you have this evil side to your nature, John?”

“No,” said John, raising his fist to knock on the door, “I make sure not to write about that.”

Mrs Hudson opened the door on the second knock, proving that she was already up.

“Oh John,” she said, “Whatever’s wrong? What’s Sherlock done this time?”

John gave Sherlock a delighted look and Sherlock scowled.

“Nothing’s wrong, Mrs Hudson. We couldn’t sleep,” John said, “So we thought we’d bring breakfast.” He proffered the box of croissants.

“Wicked boy, letting me blame Sherlock,” said Mrs Hudson, giving John the gimlet eye. Sherlock gave John a vindicated look and John laughed as he bent to kiss Mrs Hudson’s cheek.

Mrs Hudson stood away from the door, letting them in, and prodded at her sleep-hair frizzing around her head with her fingertips. “Oh, I look a mess!”

“You look fine,” Sherlock told her indulgently, kissing her forehead, “Besides, John looks like a lopsided pineapple. You don’t see him fussing.”

John’s poked at his dried-wrong hair with a look of dismay and began raking fingers through the pineapple spikes of it, but it made no difference. He scowled at Sherlock. “And you look like two birds have been fighting in yours.” Only, that was how Sherlock’s hair looked almost all of the time anyway. Sherlock just grinned smugly, because he knew this.

They settled in Mrs Hudson’s kitchen and the three of them ate croissants smothered in butter and jam, washed down with generous pots of tea. Sherlock, now post-case, ate three, making a great production out of apportioning different flavours of jam and even a section of Marmite on the first so that he could more scientifically decide what to have on the second and third, and advising Mrs Hudson on what she should try next.

“In the sitting room with you,” she admonished them when everyone was replete and sleepy with pastries, “I’ll make another pot.”

“We should let you get back to your morning…” began John. He yawned a jaw-cracking yawn and then folded his arms with irritation. He was exhausted, but remained reluctant to give himself up to sleep. Sherlock knew just how he felt.

“Nonsense,” Mrs Hudson said, flapping her hands to practically chase them through to the sofa, “A fresh pot of tea to send you on your way and you can have the day to yourselves after that.”

Sherlock felt the need to point out that they were the ones imposing on her hospitality, not the other way around, but he hardly had a sound out of his mouth before she flapped at him more energetically. “You’ve had a difficult week, I know. So you’ll sit and have another pot of tea and have a little quiet time. Heaven knows you need it, out till all hours all this week, waking up in the middle of the night like that…” She pressed her mouth shut. She didn’t like them to know the things she knew, sometimes. She thought it might embarrass them.

Sherlock couldn’t find it in himself to glare her down. He squeezed her hand instead. “More tea. Yes.”

“I’ll make chamomile,” said Mrs Hudson, patting his arm, “It might help you sleep. Both of you.”

Sherlock sat on the sofa next to John and they exchanged a glance, then both smiled at their landlady.

“Thank you,” said John, “It might help at that.”

Mrs Hudson disappeared into the kitchen. When she returned fifteen minutes later, she found that chamomile had been unnecessary after all.

Sherlock was fast asleep. All the stress lines and exhaustion she’d seen in his face had slipped away and he looked comfortable with his head tilted back against the headrest and a little to the side, so that his chin rested on top of John’s head. John had tipped a little sideways, pineapple-head against Sherlock’s shoulder, also sleeping the sleep of the exhausted. They both looked younger. Less burdened.

Mrs Hudson shook out a crocheted blanket and put it across their laps. She’d wake them in a little while, but they’d be fine as they were for now.

And they were, sleeping dreamless and peaceful for a few hours at last, in the heart of the place they called home.


End file.
